The Dillon tribune., 1887-11-04


of the winter.
Well, it's no use to 60 over that. IL
wasn't u pleasant trip. We weren't ont
for the fun of killing. We camped out at
night, and rode and shot and dressed game
by day, and did not starve nor quite freeze
to death: arr we got back again OH to the
plains along in December.
warte,l to push through ana get nome,
but ,l,c horse, were played out: and all
! the next day, after we struck the !evei,
we inst cr;,,ycd along We had not heard
q word since we started, and was pretty
pnSin,,s--Niolly was not well when l left
| l;,r: l,,,t there was no choice about it,
| had to 90: the women were with her. and
| there was a doctor IN the town. cilu Clay.
| ton ha. II nool horse, and we had to dc
about that as we had done about every
thing else-takc our chances.
shan't forget that day. Along in the
middle of the morning q norther began to
blow. 1t did not snow, although the sky
thickcned up with gray, woolly looking
clouds, low down and threatening. You
| never felt Il nurther? \ wind that goes
| through your bones, that clutches your
heart and stops your brain; that breaks
| you up body and soul. You don't know
anything about cold till you've felt one.
| II there is such thing as frozen hell,
that's where these winds come from. It
| isn't pure cold, it's ghost cold. and all the
internal regions let loose, yelling and
laundering up in the awful emptiness
over your head and round you.
Love the prairics? Well, you can love
them good deal better on paper than
anywhere else. But there's an awful fas-
cination about them, somehow. It's like
the sea. A man that's got his living out
-.
in Gods world He can't get away. He's
spoiled for everything else under heaven.
He's got to have the sky and chance to
breathe. It's about all there is to get,
better than lie can have anywhere else;
but it's u sure fact that SO much he's got
to have whatever else gets left. It's like
poem, may bel amt much Oh rhyme''
myself-driving across them in warm
weather; horses fresh and we'll fed,
with q big tent and spring cots for
camping and !. supply wagon with every
thing you can think Of but ice, and may be
that; all the world a-ripple with summer
green: like the south wind surg;ng like u
warm ocean and the sky blue and soft and
arching away up to the great white throne.
That's one thing. To go trailing along,
horses dead beat and half starved, pulling
big wagon through sloughs up to the
bolt in the concern and every bone in your
body, while mile after mile of dead grass
stretching out to the edge of the world,
with buzzards swinging up out of nowhere,
more like something internal than any de-
cent living thing; with coyotes yelping and
crying all night-that' g another thing, and
the kind that doesn't get talked about
much. Perhaps you don't remember that
item in last winters newspapers-a half
dozen lines or so-two families frozen in q
Texas norther, horses, dogs and all, just
as they stood.
That night we went into camp ten miles
from home. There was ravine and
plenty of brush, and the horses were
ready to drop in their tracks, and that
last ten miles was one of the things that
couldn't be done. So we got our fires
made and our horses fed and sheltered as
we'll as we could, and put some heart into
ourselves with buffalo steak and hot cof-
fec, and the rest of them packed them
selves into the wagon. Some one had to
stand guard and keep the fires going, and
took the contract.
1t wasn't n dark night. There was a
goOdish bit Of moon behind the clouds,
and it made gray kind of light over every
thing. We were ut the bottom of dry
canyon that ran east and west, and the
wind did not reach us. 1t screeched and
screamed over our heads, and through it
all there was kind Of moaning rour, as
it we were at the bottom of tide as deep
AZ the stars arc high. I got to thinking
about old times away back, of one Sun
day night just before we were married. I
had gone east little sooner than we ex-
pected, and had to wait for her things to
be finished. We went to church that
night. A keen, crisp, still night it was,
when the sleigh runners squealSctl on the
snow and the moonlight traced the sl,ad-
ows of the elm Oh the white ground as If
they had been put in black drawing. The
church was warm and bright and they
hadn't taken down the Christmas greens
yet, so tho air was full Of the smell of them
that spicy, haunting smell, that seems rs
If it came somehow from I. world before
this.
IL was years since I had slnelled it, and
sat and listened to the music and looked
at the people, with their comfortable
! clothing and faces that were cheerful, not
worn and wrinkled with care and weather.
Molly was an awfully pretty girl in those
days; all pink and white like an apple
| blossom, somehow. And fighting to keen
awake out there in the heart Of u Kansas
prairie, l got to thinking about her as she
was then and how she had changed. Skin
the color Of tanned leather now. and that
! wild, hungry look in her blue eyes, as if
they were always staring into tho dark for
something that frightened her. And both
her children dead, and not even IL spray
of the pine she loved 50, nor u breath Of
music; nothing but dirt floor and log
walls that did all that was expected Of
them if they kept tho weather out.
Somebody hailed over the top of the
bluff.
''What camps that:'